Michigan HC Dusty May: 'Everything we have in the tank' needed to fix turnovers, rebounding woes

ANN ARBOR – Michigan Wolverines men’s basketball head coach Dusty May had a few days to sit on Tuesday night’s 89-87 loss to Arkansas at Madison Square Garden, and it has not gotten any easier to digest.

Despite a 33-point swing in Arkansas’ favor in the middle part of the game that Michigan was able to rally back from., May knows that even a valiant fight to the end does not undo the hurt they did to themselves in the outing.

“Looking at the film, we didn’t feel great about it,” May told the media on Friday. “We made too many mistakes, self-inflicted. And credit Arkansas, they played well. They made plays. They have some really dynamic playmakers. So first tip of the cap to them, but we felt like we made a lot of self-inflicted errors. And in that environment, if you do that, you just shrink your margin of error and we felt like we did that.”

The sting of Tuesday’s loss that snapped a 7-game win streak has quickly been replaced by an 8-day layoff where Michigan can focus on itself and where it needs to improve, namely with its turnover issues and rebounding. The Wolverines are 334th in the country in turnover percentage and have struggled to secure rebounds despite having two 7-footers on the floor most of the time.

There aren’t many opportunities the rest of the way to self-reflect without game planning. This is one of them.

“It gives us more time. It gives us a few days to spend on us,” May said. “I think if you’re typically playing every three days, you get back at 5 a.m. and then you obviously can’t practice the next day. So, we would be preparing for a game probably tomorrow, and so you would shift all focus towards where now we’re focused on us, but also taking the lessons from last game and then start applying them to how it relates to Oklahoma.

“But yeah, we need this week of practice, even though our guys are busy outside of the court stuff, but we needed this to be able to really put a lot of teeth into fixing a few things that need to be fixed.”

Michigan has also blown double-digits leads in both of its losses this year, and nearly had a third on Saturday in the 85-83 win against Iowa. May says it comes down to better focus for Michigan in those critical momentum-breaking moments.

“It’s the focus part, and it’s tough because sometimes it’s a foul,” May said. “I think it was 36-21 was kind of a pivotal play against Arkansas, and we had another one of those. There’s five of us, there’s one of them, and somehow the ball just squirts to them. Tre Donaldson fouls, he had just hit a three, and the complexion of the first half probably would have looked a lot different if that loose ball had gone in a different direction. We have a tendency to usually let them go with two fouls. We wanted to get them out just to regroup, and then we ended up putting them back in.

“But I don’t have a great answer. Sometimes I think even when we made our run late against Arkansas, I felt like the shots they took were the same shots. The shots they were missing at that point were the same shots they made to go on the run. They weren’t going in, and part of it was just because of our intensity level, our sense of desperation. I felt like it kicked in, and we played the greater urgency, and that probably impacted their shots. But we have to stay focused longer. We have to continue to fight when we have a lead with the same level of urgency.”

Michigan has played one-possession games in each of its last three outings, which could help develop a callus for when things tighten up in Big Ten play. But May still does not think it is ideal.

“I don’t like it. We need to have more separation,” May said. “We can’t be in a lot of one-possession games because when you’re playing against opponents in one-possession games, you’re probably going to win them 50 percent of the time if you look at math at all. We need to have a little bit more separation. We need to shoot free throws better. The turnovers are glaring and the defensive rebounding are the two most important stats we need to fix, but we’re doing a lot of things really, really well.

“We’re offensive rebounding. Our percentage from two is elite. Our percentage from three is pretty darn good. Now, we probably need to get certain guys a few more shots and whatnot, but yeah, it’s not ideal. But we are learning to play in those high-pressure, one-possession games, and we’re going to be in them whether we want to be in them or not. So, it’s part of this group learning to win together.”

The prevailing theory is that Michigan will surge if it gets its turnovers and rebounding in check. May says no stone will be left unturned in sorting those issues out.

You have an extended period of time and you have two things that are keeping you from being your absolute best,” May said. “And so obviously we’re trying to be creative fixing those things. So practice really looks like is doing our things, but just attacking those things. Attacking those things relentlessly. Attacking them in film, attacking them in individual work, attacking them in team concepts, full speed ahead. Everything we have in the tank to fix these things.”